


Persistant Ghosts

by yeoltidecarol



Series: Tam Infra Quam Supra [1]
Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternate Universe - Witchcraft, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Oral Sex, Soul Bond, Soulmates, Vaginal Sex, Warlocks, Witch Curses, Witchcraft, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2018-12-10
Packaged: 2019-09-15 12:56:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16933647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yeoltidecarol/pseuds/yeoltidecarol
Summary: As Salem’s most accurate palm reader, Minseok is rumored to be the most powerful psychic in the country. He doesn’t bother confirming the rumors - he lets his premonitions speak for themselves. From person to person, he’s seen a lot of shit - he’s rarely surprised anymore. Until, of course, he meets you. You, he thinks, are the most surprising, and terrifying, thing he’s ever seen.





	Persistant Ghosts

**1979 - THE PROPHECY**

Even in the centuries they had lived, the centuries tarnished with bloodshed, war, and death, they had never seen anything quite so tragic as the way Yixing screamed into the night.

He was inconsolable, tearing at his shirt and sheets as though they were fiends meant to destroy him, starved and desperate for the feast they could make of the marrow of his bones. Eyes rolled back into his head, he screamed at the ceiling and at them, jaw hanging low as if trying to come unhinged. A cavern was being made of him, his organs coming apart from the inside as he saw and saw and saw, unwillingly filled with woe. A thin sheen of sweat glimmered at his hairline, lips chapped and cracking, cheeks streaked with tears as his body became little more than a massacre of grief.

They did not know how to help him, thought, surely, he was dying. He was dying and they would bare witness to the great unmaking of someone as powerful as a god.

‘I don’t know how to help him,’ Baekhyun cried, voice small and thin and broken; reduced, then, to little more than a whimper. He gasped for breath as he finished speaking, as though even his small expression of despair had caused him great effort.

They stood around him, some crying and others simply silenced into awe, watching and waiting for the loss to hurt.

Chanyeol noticed it first, noticed the way Yixing’s hands did not merely clutch at the fabric, but moved it. The joints of his fingers were working, twisting and giving shape to motions that seemed familiar, clear only through great concentration and focus. As they watched his hands, his screams died, jaw suddenly clenching tight as a sound tore through the center of his chest. It was not a scream, nor was it a growl of agony, merely the noise of a man anxious to speak but trapped behind a veil of sleep.

'He’s trying to write!’

Junmyeon had figured it out, brain working quickly and moving him to action the moment saw the movement in his fingers; he heard the way words lived and died on his tongue, trapped and lost and fading. At once, they found him a legal pad and a pencil, watched in silence as his head tipped back and his hands did all the work, writing and writing and writing in letters that did not look as though they belonged to his hand. The letters of his script were large, unpracticed, curved in ways they should not and blurring into one another.

Back then, automatic writing was a thing many had tried and all had failed, methods of communicating with the dead reserved for Spirit Walkers and Mediums. It was a concept, not a practice, but Yixing gave birth to the truth as though he had chiseled it into stone.

For hours, he wrote, Baekhyun moving the pages and the pad on his behalf, before weakness and exhaustion took root in his arms and Junmyeon took over. Chanyeol brought water, said it was the only thing he really knew how to do, to nurture and care and support. Minseok tucked himself into the corner of the room, fell into the shadows and let them make a home of him, patient though not altogether peaceful. Resting his elbows on his knees, he ran a finger over his lips in thoughtless patterns, eyes glazed but mind alert and attentive.

It was loud - the way Yixing wrote and transcribed was loud, louder than the echo and shape of his own scream. With every scratch of the pencil, Minseok heard the grief, the pain, the torment lift off the page and bloom into the night, shrill enough he swore life was breathed into the sounds with each stroke. He did not need to know what he was writing, for his mind and soul would translate it all, would breathe life into the anguish that their hands would free. Rivers of blood had not been seen on this land for centuries, though it did not take much effort to remember - in truth, it lived behind their eyes, replaying in every silent, peaceful moment.

In those days, blood covered the leaves so completely it appeared they had grown soaked with the stain. Like rain, it dripped from the trees, covering the hair of all who passed and staining their clothes. Nowhere was safe, not even homes with locked doors or churches, holy grounds made for prayer and forgiveness. This kind of darkness was not born of religion, it was born from choice, and it demanded life.

It was happening again, a great tidal wave of horror to haunt and ravage the earth. Black stallions and black figures, formless and faceless, but grim - ready to eat their way across the world. The sounds of their voices drove scars into the soil of the earth, and he heard it.

He heard it, he heard it, he heard it.

And not once did he forget.

**NOW**

The darkness holds him, much like water, barely there and delicate, with hands that embrace him as though he is a treasure. This touch, he thinks, is not unlike a cradle. It keeps him, nurtures him, though it does not protect him.

There is something odd about this world, something wrong and something uncomfortable. Shapes loom and spread in unrecognizable patterns, traversing the length of thought with a gleam of wickedness. This, he assumes, he will forget. He will forget the way everything seems to have turned to its side and become distorted beyond coherent recognition.

And when he is pulled, unceremoniously and without much affection, from the depths of sleep, all that Minseok can register is the sound of Yixing screaming.

Drenched in sweat and breathing shallow, he lays in bed with wide, wild eyes and stares at the ceiling, letting the tension in his muscles wrought him into iron. Over and over, his tongue laps fruitlessly at his lips, running over the flesh in an effort to keep it moist and to keep his skin from tightening around him as a noose. His breath, ragged and uneven, cools the wetness he has created, and as his spirit settles, heart stumbling back into a steady rhythm, he is confident it is Yixing’s voice, and not his own, that woke him.

Hovering in a state of incomplete wakefulness, he remembers brief details of his dream, fragmented and fissured as they are. Eagerly, his fingers grab fistfuls of the details, latching on to things he finds important and insistent.

_Pine trees shiver as they lose their needles, withering in grief and loss as they welcome the burden of the season; stories do not end, they merely continue without pages to transcribe their details, and, some stories are not stories at all; lived experiences carve horror into the bones, marking and scaring a person until they are little more than a trauma of love and sorrow, enduring the slow evisceration of the ability to discern between the two; when faith dissolves so too is meaning and hope spread thin, and it is here that truth begins to perish, torn to threads and drowned beneath the spilling of innocent blood._

These incoherent thoughts resonate through the caverns his mind, turning his fingers to claws by the strength of his grip on the blankets. With the light of the moon casting shadows on the walls, he finds he wishes there were faces in these shapes, things of clarity and things of familiarity for him to hold onto, but all he is left with is the great and unbearable turmoil of ignorance.

And it is for this reason, the ignorance of everything, that he knows the voice that woke him was not his. For weeks, Yixing’s terrible howl of knowledge has echoed through the house more times than anyone could count. Lately, he thinks, the sound has wormed its way into the walls, becoming one with the wood and vibrating against his touch. With the passing of this season’s autumn equinox, he has woken in the night, woken everyone with him, lost and frightened and cursed with the knowledge of translating his pain for all the rest.

'Guys, hurry the fuck up!’

Baekhyun’s voice shocks him to a start, makes the hairs on his arm stand on end, as it usually does. Panic does not suit the gentle tenor of his voice, rarely makes a home of him and chooses instead to linger just beyond his realm of understanding, light pouring from even the very essence of his thoughts. But now, tonight, Baekhyun is unsure and unsteady, frightened by everything he must witness and he is unwilling to do so alone. He should be well practiced by now, versed in all the ways this gift is a torment, but one is never really prepared for the onslaught of death.

The urgency in his words lifts Minseok from the bed, barefoot and shirtless and wholly unconcerned with finding a shirt to cover his skin. Very little enters his mind beyond the whisper of faith that tonight, perhaps, Yixing will be able to pull himself from the night terror - though this, he knows, is unlikely. When Yixing is held by the night, he is captive, immobile and imprisoned by the visions he is forced to endure.

The first time it happened, decades ago, they had been sure he would die. The veins in his neck began to turn black and protrude, rising beneath the skin with such strength it appeared as though they would break. His hands clutched desperately to all he could touch, voice screaming and teeth chewing the inside of his cheek the moment his jaw would bring itself closed. Baekhyun had cried, grieved for his friend and assumed this was how they wall would die, chests raised from their beds as through their hearts would be stolen from beneath their sternum.

Chanyeol regarded the whites of Yixing’s eyes as though he were witnessing God and the devil and all things that were so greatly terrible all at once, reverent in the way a man greets his own mortality. For days he did not speak, trapped in a perpetual state of remembrance that made his voice bleed dry. Back then, it was rare for Chanyeol to remain quiet, to choose not to laugh and instead to admire the sounds of others. His silence was an omen, they thought, and though he has since recovered, he has not truly been the same since. For days, he did not sleep, rendered insomniac by the reminder that death does not escape anyone and that, on them, it will be a gruesome, almost inhuman affair. Even now, this continues, some nights spent with him walking the floors, waiting for it to start all over again or simply waiting for everything to end. His hands spent days avoiding the skin of others, his own fingertips coated in the sweat of a man he viewed as an idol and burning memory into the crevices of his fingerprints. And even now, he is slow to touch.

Minseok remembers every detail of the first time Yixing screamed like this, but mostly he remembers the aftermath. That morning, Yixing sat in the warm embrace of the daylight, glowing with the dawn and letting his skin turn red and yellow and gold - suddenly the most vital they had ever seen him. And so it was a contradiction that he should appear so full and beautiful and alive given the way he described the end of the world, with detail and with conviction, as though he had watched every man and woman and creature burn to dust before his eyes.

They stood around him, often afraid to move, suddenly gun shy around a man the considered a brother. In the stillness, the air began to change - at once heavy and thick and pregnant with purpose. He looked each one of his brothers in the eye, regarded them wholly and silently, ensuring he had their undivided attention.

Love, he said, was the great undoing, the key to mass destruction. If they were to ever find love, a great love of their soul, all things would be punished. Their love would bring about a slaughter.

Unable to take it serious, he had laughed then, said that this could not be right if only because it seemed utterly preposterous, somehow too cruel to be considered. This, he had said, went against every natural law they had been taught. But when Yixing looked at him, cold, impassive, and unmoved, his voice become little more than a dagger, piercing and sharp and precise in the way he simply said 'those who do not believe love is a destruction are foolish enough to let themselves die by its hand.’

That was the last time he discussed love, even as a passing topic, with a tongue that tasted joy at the word.

Tonight, Baekhyun sits on Yixing’s bed, jaw set and focused as he tries to light the room as though he is offering the sun. It’s fruitless, this effort, though it has never stopped him from trying. Tonight, the light only serves to cast shadows along the length of Yixing’s cheekbones, making him appear hollow and somewhat frail. Sweat has soaked through into the white of his shirt, tarnishing the collar and making him appear sickly, his collarbones lifting the fabric in an illusion of strength.

Beside the bed, Junmyeon keeps his hands on the sheets, absorbing the moisture so that, when this ends, if this ends, at least he will be comfortable and perhaps he may sleep. Chanyeol moderates the mood - of Yixing, the room, and everyone in it, using his heightened empathy to keep peace. After recurring nights like this, there is a system and they all have a role to play, something to do to keep themselves busy - to help, even if it is only to help themselves, to feel useful when they very possibly are insignificant.

Minseok props himself in the corner of the room on a hard wooden chair, studying the way Yixing writes in even, elegant strokes. After so many nights like this, even Yixing has gotten used to the way it grips him, hand trained and poised even if the message is vague and unclear. Tonight, he writes on a pad of loose leaf paper.

Minseok frowns, leaning forward on his elbows to point his finger at the paper. ‘No one got him his journal?’

Baekhyun does not bother to look away from Yixing as he speaks, focused and attentive. ‘I grabbed the first thing I had,’ he says, voice empty and emotionless.

Shaking his head, Minseok moves from his seat to the night stand beside Yixing’s bed. Squinting through Baekhyun’s light, he pulls open the drawer and retrieves the leather journal, grimacing at how thick it has recently become. Pages and pages of transcribed notes, spells, and automatic writing have been folded down and tucked between even older spells and notes.

‘He’ll be upset with the inconsistency.’ Opening the book to a fresh page, nothing with a sigh he is almost at the end of his journal, he gently guides the loose leaf out from beneath Yixing’s hand, slowly replacing each inch with the journal. ‘Rip out the pages and we’ll put them in here when he’s done.’

Notebook in hand, Minseok tears at the pages, slow and purposeful so as not to rip any words or markings. Careful with the placement of his fingers, he ensures he does not touch the words, not until he is ready for all the noise they will crowd into his weary mind.

Baekhyun watches him, watches the way his light makes the notebook glow, choosing instead to focus on things that do not hurt his eyes. ‘What happens when he gets to the end of this journal?’

Knowing silence constricts everyone like a vice, their eyes casting glances at one another without finding the will to speak. They remember it all, of course, the suffering and the trauma, the tragedy. Witches from coast to coast falling ill, plagued with an uncontrolled violence, a magic they could not contain, or, rather, no magic at all. Other journals have brought strangers, men and women alike demanding money, demanding magic, demanding entry into the coven. Strife befalls their coven, with ease and turmoil, transmuting the energy of their city, their world, into something frail and weak. Rarely does the end of a journal bode well. Rarely is the end of a journal welcomed.

Junmyeon hums, the sound deep and melodic, though he keeps his gaze trained on Yixing’s parted lips. Still, his expression remains impartial, choosing to lead with clarity. ‘Whatever happens, we must be prepared for it. We’ve done it before. We will do it again. At least this time we know we are near.’

Minseok nods in agreement, letting the murmurs acknowledgement follow him as he moves to sit back in his chair. Regarding the torn pages in his hand, he leans back and lets the creaking of the oak chair break the tension in the room. With a sigh, he grimaces. This is not Yixing’s writing, it never is, even though it’s beautiful, curved, and well trained. For decades, they’ve asked for a name from his guide, for some answer from the spirit, or, perhaps, even a clear, concise explanation of why. It never comes.

As usual, the words say the same things they have said for the past month, though, this time, pressure on the page has made the words run black and in stark contrast.

**THEY WILL WALK WHERE FLESH RUNS COLD AND BLOOD AND BLOOD WILL BY FIVE HANDS SING THE TALE OF BURNING SAVIOR AND IN MONSTRUM EX TOTO CORDIA IN BESTIA AND THE SEALS ARE TENFOLD DECIM SIGNACULA EIUS DILECTIONE WHEN I POTEST VIDERE UNUM FINEM UT SUPRA SIC IN ANIMA YOU WILL WAKE PERSISTENT GHOSTS**

He should be used to the Latin by now, be used to the way the sight of it coils around his spine and makes his skin feel taught. It’s important, desperate to be looked at, touched, and felt, and he should be used to it. Minseok should be used to it, but always he looks away, too soon and too brief to really have seen it at all. When he offers his full attention to the words, lets his focus sit and linger on the way they seem to shout louder, run thicker in the ink, he feels them as a knife in the center of his skull.

These words, he thinks, are meant to be carved. And they have taken to carving into him.

They are the same words as always but tonight there is something different about their shape. Now, they have been curved in a way that appears almost feminine, a script too languid and graceful to be made by a masculine touch. Even as he regards the words, he’s sure he can hear a woman’s voice resonate through the chaos - before he has touched them, before he has let them melt against his skin - and this is how he knows this message is something akin to grave.

Closing his eyes, he braces himself, readies his mind and body. He’s used to letting himself become somewhat vacant and a little lost, mind emptying and expanding to welcome the consciousness of someone else. He is used to this feeling, but he is never used to the fear. And with an unsteady hand, he touches the words.

_The fire burns brighter than it usually does, flames consumed by the strength of a person born to contain the heat in the palm of their hand. Hands reach and grasp for one another, seeking and seeking, and searching even through the fog and the fear. The vast expanse of his mind brings forward the softness of fur and sinew, and the howls of the dead._

_They are not alone - it’s true, all at once, the knowledge that they are not and will never be alone again. Something has been watching them, something has been waiting. Eyes of gold, tempting and beautiful and so incomprehensibly dangerous, watching in the shadows and waiting for a brief, infallible moment of weakness. The claws pull at the wood; the blood runs in a stream, not just from one heart but from many, torn open and chewed, rendered into nothing but pulp. Flesh comes away from the bone as though it were made of little more than silk and satin, tearing as though it were made to be dismantled._

_The dead have never died. The dead do not die. The dead are patient._

_And she is beautiful, exquisite. Her smile is the sun, gathering energy and rendering all those around her meaningless. Her skin is cotton, warm to the touch and a comfort he did not know he should seek. Her heart beats true, true and pure and loud, and he is unsure how he has ever heard a single sound above the rhythm. She glows, she laughs and she glows, and all the people he ever thought he could love vanish, erupting into little more than ash the moment he lets himself draw her near._

Opening his eyes with a start, Minseok struggles to catch his breath as he takes in the room around him. Junmyeon regards him with concern while Chanyeol bites his lip, straining beneath the effort of keeping everyone calm. Yixing still writes, and Baekhyun still waits - he thinks perhaps he was out for less than a second, but it was enough to stop his heart entirely. His lungs are compressed, tight and winding together in rejection of oxygen.

'What did you see?’ Junmyeon asks, tone even, though void of any reassurances.

He simply shakes his head, unsure he could speak even if he wanted to.

On shaky legs he rises to a stand, breathing deep and long and hoping to turn himself to a mountain. He moves to the bed, running a hand through his hair in the appraisal of his brother and thinks, maybe, he could find clarity to all the noise if he simply could hold Yixing’s energy. More than ever, he craves peace - peace and serenity and the comfort of loneliness that comes with sleep.

Pressing a hand to Yixing’s forehead, he feels, only momentarily, the sweat that has gathered along his brow, before once again he is lost.

The voices scream around him, visions of blinding light and the burning of flesh - he smells it within the hairs of his nose, how the body turns sour when thrown into a funeral pyre. They tell him all the ways the light will unmake them, unmake them and unify them. Another woman, with a curved spine and teeth like fangs stands before him, a gargoyle of protective intent before she too is slaughtered. It will touch them, this war, touch them and ensure their very bones are eradicated.

Pulling his hand back, Minseok presses his fingers to his lips, suddenly nauseous. A chill runs down his spine, and suddenly he is reminded he is gravely underdressed. Now, he wishes something warm against the cold sweat of his chest and shoulders.

'What did you see?’ Chanyeol tries, repeating Junmyeon’s question with delicate words.

'Fucking…’ Minseok’s voice fades, bewildered and mortified. 'I have no idea.’

As if his admission of confusion settled the terror in his mind, Yixing falls limp on the bed, body still and jaw slack with the sudden remove of strength. For several moments, no one dares to move, wondering if this really is the end or if these visions have finally stopped his heart.

Baekhyun touches two fingers to the pulse in his neck, sighing. 'He’s fine. Just sleeping.’

‘They’re getting shorter,’ Junmyeon states, removing his hand from the sheets and shaking the drops of water away from his skin.

Minseok runs his hand through his hair once more, tugging at the fistfuls and closes his eyes. ‘Because what he’s writing is getting more clear.’

\---

'I don’t know why I’m bothering,’ Chanyeol huffs, leaning back in his chair as his fingers run over the rim of his coffee mug. 'I don’t speak Latin.’

Fog lingers this early in the morning, putting condensation on the windows of the kitchen and letting the light of the sun cast a haze around the room. The white of the cabinets seems to glow, the dishes and bright wood of the table rendered into sacred objects by the force of their shadows. It’s warm in the kitchen, odd for a morning this late into October, but no one comments on the temperature, glad for the comfort. Huddling into the protective hold of their pajamas, the somber mood still battles through the morning, residual anxiety from the night before pressing itself into the pores of their skin.

The reams of Yixing’s writing remain in the center of the table, placed there just beside his journal, rejected and pushed at some distance away from everyone, as though its very presence is offensive. Junmyeon leans against the sink, fully dressed and frowning, as he regards the papers and glances at Chanyeol with gentle appraisal.

'I mean, I do and even I don’t know what this says,’ he shrugs, gesturing towards the papers with his own mug. 'These conjugations are old, ancient. I don’t think these have been used since before even the Roman republic.’

Cocking his head to the side as he regards the journal beside the loose-leaf, Yixing smirks with interest. Minseok looks away from him, unwilling to neither accept nor acknowledge the evenness of his temperament. As though he is not upset he has been used, time and again, by spirits. As though he is fine, greeting death with open arms and demanding that he live.

'You’re talking about pre-dating the origin of Latin itself,’ Minseok announces, speaking directly to the burned corners of his toast.

'No, not really,’ Junmyeon continues, nonchalantly and ignoring the tension in Minseok’s voice. 'Latin technically was first discovered on a pin dating back to the seventh century.’

'But even then that inscription had form and shape similar to Runic markings.’ Yixing is suddenly spurred to action, delighted by this banter, and eagerly wearing the clothes of a historian. 'And look at this.’ He reaches quickly for one of the sheets, sliding it towards him with elegant fingers. 'There’s nothing ancient about the way the verbs are connected.’

Sighing, Junmyeon pushes himself from the sink and moves to lean over Yixing’s shoulder, regarding the writing with pursed lips. His eyes scan the page as Minseok peers at them through his eyelashes, uneasy.

‘Yes,’ Junmyeon starts, turning back to the sink to stare out the window, ‘but that doesn’t account for the more important grammatical note for how it ends’ He pauses, glancing down into his cup, appearing torn with what he is about to say. Eventually, he drinks the last of his coffee and turns back to face the group. Minseok reads his expression immediately, finding it grim. ‘Nearly all of it is slightly modern, but the endings of all the existence verbs -’

Yixing cuts him off, already at the same conclusion. 'It’s like multiple voices taking turns to speak.’

The center of Minseok’s stomach seems to drop, falling and caving in on itself at the way Yixing almost seems glad for this. As thought this solution is more satisfying than all the rest. Leaning back in his chair, he crosses his arms and regards both with furrowed brows. 'You’re saying you’re hearing multiple spirits?’

'It’s possible, isn’t it?’ Yixing offers, soft spoken and serene. Minseok glances at Chanyeol, wondering if this were his doing, but he shakes his head. 'We can’t rule it out.’

'Does it really matter what it says?’ he scoffs, pressing his back against the chair.

'Don’t be ridiculous,’ Junmyeon starts, disbelieving, ‘of course it matters.’

'No,’ Minseok argues, pressing forward. ‘He’s seeing it.’ Eyeing Yixing once more, he keeps his focus trained on his face, studying him and burning his features into memory. ‘You are seeing what you’re writing. It shouldn’t really matter what you wind up writing.’

'Not entirely,’ Yixing begins, glancing down to his journal and looking somber. His gaze seems to fade, retreating back into the memory of restlessness. ‘I just write what they tell me, but even then I don’t really remember it when I wake up.’

'Hey,’ Baek smiles, moving to push Yixing’s mug closer to him. 'Drink your tea.’

Briefly, they smile at one another, finding comfort in one another’s closeness.

‘And why are you suddenly okay with there being more than one voice?’ Minseok questions, urging the conversation along. ‘You sound almost excited.’ He can’t help the way the words sound like poison, and he glances up at the ceiling in frustration, searching for a kinder tone, or phrasing, and coming up empty.

‘I wouldn’t say I’m okay with it,’ Yixing explains, sipping at his tea slowly. The white linen of his shirt slides over his shoulders as he moves, and Minseok notes the weight he has lost with a grimace. ‘It’s simply something we must consider if we want to learn how to handle this.’

‘Handle it?’ Baekhyun ask, blowing on his tea..

Yixing contemplates his words with a hum. ‘I’ve fully accepted this will never stop.’ He looks around the room, meeting each in the eye. ‘We have to learn to integrate it.’

A laugh bursts from Minseok’s chest, cold and harsh, a laugh that scratches at his throat and surprise seven him. The others face him, perplexed by the force of the sound and ready for his dissenting opinion.

‘Have we not been handling it for decades? Weeks?’ he asks sharply.

‘You know what he means,’ Junmyeon counters, the weight and heaviness in his tone leaving no room for argument.

'Okay, but we’ve all been through this so many times,’ Minseok presses, diverting and changing the topic slightly. ‘Truly, every time this happens - even from the first time - we run through the same arguments and never come up with any answers.’

Rolling his eyes, Junmyeon turns and empties his cup. He places it in the sink with a sharp ring of porcelain meeting porcelain, turning once again to face the group with a hand on his hip. 'Because the Latin keeps changing.’

'The Latin changes but does the meaning?’ Minseok How do we know it’s not just the same prophecy over and over?’

'It feels different,’ Yixing announces, cutting through the argument. He lets his fingers strike the edge of his journal, expression vacant and distant once more. ‘It feels different, as if it’s just _more_.’

Noise floods Minseok’s mind, the sound of screaming and sound of dying. Always, each time Yixing falls into this state, more voices are added, compounded together in one long and endless drone of anguish.

‘Well, that…’ he begins, words fading as they drown in the sound. Closing his eyes, he shakes the energy from his bones and sigh. ‘I can’t argue with that.’

Now Junmyeon scoffs, dissatisfied. 'We have all this shit, and all you’ve got is it feels different?’

'When I touch the words - man, don’t act like you know,’ Minseok counters, frowning at Junmyeon’s lack of compassion. ‘Yixing looks like he’s going to die and when I touch the words, I feel it. I really feel like everyone is going to die, or is. Right before my eyes.’

At once the room feels tense with his admission, no one willing to speak in the wake of his words. He’s mentioned it, many times he has mentioned it, but lately they have been feeling as though this kind of catastrophe is on its approach. Doom lingers just beyond the peripheral of their vision, and they don’t need to be psychic to know that it is close.

'The point is that they’re coming.’ Yixing’s voice breaks the tension in the room, though his statement is not altogether comforting.

'Who?’ Chanyeol tries, though immediately regrets it.

They each remember the day they sat in this same kitchen, different aesthetics to what then would have been considered modern, but in the same position and with the same level of trepidation. That day, they talked of women and of love; they talked of lust and desire, and all the ways they feel like love in the in-between.

They talked of how the opening of their heart to another would cause the world to burn.

Leaning forward on the table, Minseok presses the heels of his palms into his eyes and considers his position seriously. For weeks, he has been dreaming of them - not with the same clarity or intensity as Yixing, but sensing them just the same. He wonders how long it has been since he’s had a deep, truly restorative sleep.

'I already know you’re talking about them,’ he says, removing his hands and meeting Yixing in the eye.

'The soulmates?’

Yixing tosses the word out carelessly, haphazardly, testing his response, though his gaze remains penetrative and terse.

Nodding, he tried to find the words to navigate this truth. 'I think I saw a flash of one last night.’

The moment he says the words, he feels the pressure in his lungs start to build. Her laugh echoes in his mind, loud and boisterous and wholly unapologetic. She feels joy with the whole length of her skin, and Minseok wonders how he did not die by the mere acceptance of her existence. This, he knows, is how he should have felt, how he would have felt if Chanyeol had not controlled the room.

'Besides,’ he continues, keeping his breath locked tight in his chest for fear of sounding weak, ‘I’ve been feeling something for ages. I just didn’t want to say anything.’

‘How long?’ Junmyeon snaps, gripping the counter to keep himself from moving forward, carried by anger. ‘You didn’t think to tell anyone?’

‘Easy,’ Minseok says, raising his hands in surrender. ‘I wanted to be sure it was that before I cried wolf.’

‘Regardless,’ Yixing says, eyeing both of them in warning. 'They have to be avoided.’ It’s odd for Yixing to sound so cold or so cruel, his brow furrowed in seriousness. ‘Now more than ever, you must keep your distance from anyone unfamiliar.’

'Perhaps even someone familiar,’ Junmyeon adds in agreement.

'We don’t even know who they are,’ Baekhyun says, somewhat incredulous. ‘How are we possibly meant to avoid everyone? What if they’re customers or clients?’

'Just don’t let down your guard,’ Junmyeon says, acquiescing somewhat flippantly, effectively done with the conversation. 'I have to go open the shop.’ He grabs his keys from the counter, muttering to himself as he makes for the door. ‘We’re already behind schedule.’

Coming to stand, Minseok carries his plate to the sink and stretches. 'Yeah,’ he agrees with Jun, as though he is still there. ‘I have some appointments today. I need to get down there.’

'May I suggest you cancel some of your readings as a precaution?’ Yixing offers, reclining in his seat and attempting to appear cordial in his statement.

'You can suggest it,’ Minseok smirks, ‘but it doesn’t mean I will listen.’

'Minseok.’

'My life can’t stop for love.’ Wiping his hands on a dishcloth, he considers the seriousness of Yixing’s warnings and the way her laugh walks over his spine, seeking entrance and demanding he bend to her will. He’s willing. Already, he knows he is willing. He takes a moment before he speaks, savoring and fearing the totality of her. ‘I assure you I’ll be careful, but we need money to eat and to live. We get that through having loyal clients who ask me to read their fortunes and tell them, I don’t know, their husband isn’t cheating or the guy at work thinks their tits look nice in their favourite shirt.’

At this, Yixing laughs, hard and long, and Minseok is glad for the sound. 'Please tell me you’re more accurate than that.’

'Of course I am,’ he says, serious. ‘I just leave out the details they don’t want to hear.’

With a smirk and a wink, he leaves the others in the kitchen, still trying to shake the way her fingers feel against his skin.

\---

The woman in front of him is lonely.

He can tell by the way she sits across from him, slouching forward in the hopes her breasts are showcased beneath the low cut of her shirt. The light casts shadows on her neck and skin, appealing though altogether too desperate. She watches with wide eager eyes as he runs his fingers over her palm, breathing deeply, wantonly, with every hum of understanding he releases. A smirk plays at his lips, eyes scanning the length of her hand while, in his peripheral, she preens, captivated by his touch.

Her hands are smooth, delicate, though the joints are tired - she worries easily, is prone to paranoia, is a Scorpio, and leaves everyone she knows before they can leave her. She is lonely, but, really, she has made herself this way. 

‘I just want to know…’ She begins, only to fall quiet with uncertainty. With her free hand, she tucks her blonde hair behind her ear, trying to sit straight enough to elongate her frame.

‘It’s ok,’ he laughs, charming and smooth, knowing exactly how to peak her desire and make her trust him. He doesn’t need to, but he always does, pandering to common expectations. ‘You can ask it. This is a safe space.’

Diverting the topic, she moves forward slightly, letting her hand rub against his fingers, smirking at the contact. ‘They say you’re the most accurate.’

‘Is that your question?’

‘No, but…I just want you to know why I’m here.’ He feels the change in her energy as she speaks, the unease and the sudden flutter of her heart making the room warm. She’s flirting, trying to flirt, he thinks, eager to sound unique. ‘I don’t do this, really.’

Pulling his hand back, the feel of her skin overwhelming and filled with so much sentiment turning his stomach. ‘I get a lot of people in here who never do this.’

‘Do they believe you?’

‘Sometimes,’ he nods, starting to drown at the way his nausea begins to root deeper into his stomach, breath starting to come in shallow huffs. ‘I think so.’ It takes work to keep his voice even, feeling as though he is about to capsize. ‘In their own way, they believe. Often, they believe that I believe, which is just as important.’

‘I’m always on the fence,’ she says, unsure and hoping to be convinced by him alone.

Minseok merely hums, bile rising in his throat. ‘Yeah?’

‘It seems plausible,’ she shrugs, ‘but we’re always taught to not trust them right?’

‘Them?’

He can’t help the grimace that tugs at the corners of his lips, tongue feeling heavy in his mouth. Inhaling deeply, he keeps his eyes trained in hers, hoping to appear present and powerful, his skin starting to crawl.

‘You know,’ she smirks, sounding playful. ‘Psychics.’

‘Like me?’

This does not happen. The tidal wave of an oncoming vision rarely hits him when he’s with an otherwise insignificant and uninteresting client. She is not exceptional, but the feeling surrounding her is. It’s separate from her, hovering just outside her energy which tells him this vision will have nothing to do with her at all.

‘Yes, but…I don’t know.’ She shifts once more, pressing her elbows against her breasts, accentuating them. Her gaze moves over him, walking over the length of his neck and down to the exposed angle of his collarbone beneath his shirt. There, her gaze lingers, pleased by the sight. ‘You seem different.’

Against his skin, her eyes feel unwelcome. They move over him, leaving behind a residue that feels slick and inhuman. Part of him wants to call her a succubus, and for a moment he believes Yixing was right in saying he should have canceled this appointment.

Instead, he grips the table to ground his energy, letting his breath sink deep into his blood and lungs. ‘That’s because I am different.’

‘You’re more accurate,’ she nods, parroting what she’s read on TripAdvisor.

Chuckling, he focuses momentarily on moving his energy within his body, on releasing the nerves that have settled in his stomach. He views it as a flushing, a great release through the pores of his skin and through every exhale. It takes considerable effort to fend off a vision, to hold it at the edge of his mind until he is free and alone. He’s done it before, and so he will do it again, a monument of self-mastery.

‘Accuracy depends on what you were looking for,’ he counters, glad his voice sounds stronger, unburdened by the throes of a vision.

‘How so?’ Cocking her head to the side, she peers at him with a skeptical pout. ‘Isn’t accuracy pretty cut and dry.’

‘In some ways, yes,’ he agrees, leaning forward to view her hand once more. His body feels ravaged, exhausted by the vision and by this woman’s efforts to win him over, wholly unoriginal in execution. She’s wrong for him, fundamentally. Her palm tells him so. ‘In others, I could tell you that you are selfish in love, or that you fall in love too quickly. I could tell you that you hold onto worries too often, viewing every encounter in your life as something done to you; a victim. or, I could say you’re holding on to the sour relationship between you and you sister too deeply. But you aren’t looking for any of those things, are you?’

Pulling her hand back with a gasp, she looks at him, appalled and alarmed and suddenly feeling vulnerable. He’s used to this, used to it and used to be delighted by the sight. Now, he wishes she’d move through it so he could get to other, more important concerns.

‘I should be offended,’ she breathes, trying to wade through the feeling of being exposed.

But something in her voice warps, morphs into something unfamiliar and deep. It’s a low register for a woman to have, undercut by her prom falsetto. She’s changing, or maybe he is, and he feels the pricks of the vision return to the whites of his eyes.

Leaning back in his seat, he crosses his arms over his chest, protecting himself from the unknown black that has started to loom in the corner of the room.

‘You should be,’ he begins, his sight of her changing. He sees her now, not as she is but as she wants to be, her desires simple and closed minded. ‘You should be, but you aren’t because I’m right. It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?’ He regards her cooly for a moment before continuing, skin feeling taught over his bones. ‘But when it comes to finding out how many kids you’ll have with the man who sits in the cubicle to your left: none. He hasn’t chosen to want that with you.’

She blinks at him slowly, bewildered by the whiplash of his brutal honesty. ‘How did you know that?’

He shrugs, dismissively. ‘Everything is choice.’

‘But what about fate?’ she asks, sounding desperate.

And as she says the word ‘fate,’ the world around him begins to slip, fading into a delicate nothingness. In his chest and lungs, a pull begins to form, not unlike a steel cable, luring him forward against his will. Blood leaves his cheeks and lips, turning him pale, and he’s sure he must look ill, but if she speaks, he does not hear.

Its similar, in weight and force and implication, to the sense of foreboding he feels when he touches Yixing. This kind of vision is uncontrollable, paying no mind to wish or whim, demanding to be felt and touched with the length of his entire existence. In the center of his chest, doom begins to hollow him. Languidly and eagerly, it takes all the things he considers good and gold, and renders him powerless.

With nothing of him left, it lingers at the base of his spine, coiling around the sinew like a snake and rendering him into little more than a witness. For a moment, there is pleasure to this weakness, to the stillness that comes with the lack of will. For a moment, he thinks he could be happy.

It does not last.

The woman in front of him is speaking, saying things he’s sure are arguments in favor of her character, saying she does not agree, that she doesn’t hold onto things that much, but she will think of reasons why that would be so. He’s sure she says this, but all he hears is the low intonation of the word SEAL.

Surrendering to the arms of the vision, he lets himself luxuriate in the deepness of the sound, surprised and pleasures by how feminine it still sounds. The laughter comes back, the ghost of a woman he thought he could or would love. He loves it, the sound, the meaning, the terror of it all.

She will be his great undoing, and he will relish every moment.

And, the moment he accepts this knowledge, the vision fades, disappearing as though it was not there at all.

All quiet and still, he struggles to catch his breath, winded by sight and feeling as his client regards him, confused. She regards him with concern as he regards her without seeing her at all. He looks through her, rather, in the effort of seeing a ghost that haunts only his mind.

‘Are you okay?’ she asks, reaching her hand forward slightly before pulling it back, resting her hands in her lap.

‘Yeah,’ he coughs, gathering himself. ‘Fate. Well, some people have a Fate Line, but you do not.’

She blanches. ‘So what does that mean?’

‘Well, first of all, the Fate Line does not have anything to do with destiny,’ he begins, running his fingers over the table to ease his nerves. ‘It actually denotes how many events in our lives occur that are out of our control, and how deeply we let them influence us.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Not having a Fate Line means you are in complete control of the events in your life, which should be extremely empowering.’ The residual sickness from the vision hits him all at once, not unlike a hangover. He scowls, trying to continue. ‘If you feel a lack of control, it’s because you’ve put yourself in a cage of your own making.’ At this, he smiles, thinking of another way to explain it. ‘The Devil Card.’

‘The Devil?’ she exclaims, voice rising in pitch. ‘What are you saying?’

He stares at her blankly momentarily, energy depleted and leaving him with little else to give.‘Sorry, I’m not feeling very well suddenly,’ he sighs, rising to a stand and offering his hand for her to shake. ‘We can schedule a tarot reading to look into this more deeply.’

‘Oh, gosh.’ She comes to awkwardly shaking his hand as she leans to gather her bag. ‘Okay. Are you okay?’

‘I’ll be fine, thank you,’ he smiles, reassuringly. ‘I just need some air. Baekhyun at the front of the store can schedule you.’

‘Okay. See you soon.’ She moves towards the navy curtain that sections his reading room off from the rest of the shop, pausing to turn back to him, hand gripping the cloth. ‘It wasn’t me, right? My life didn’t cause…visions or anything?’

‘No, no,’ he says, trying to appear calm and serene though he’s sure his expression remains blank. ‘Don’t worry.’

With a small nod, she pushes through the curtain and into the shop.

Relieved, he grabs his leather jacket from the chair, sliding it on with hurried motions as he pushes through the black door behind his seat. The back room of the shop is crowded, filled with books and boxes, organized though always contained in a state of chaos and disarray. Junmyeon sits at the desk by the computer, tracking finances with his nose perched low on his nose.

He walks briskly by, dropping the money in front of him without bothering to stop for conversation. As he moves, he feels Junmyeon’s gaze bore into his back, watching him with concern. Part of him wants to turn and offer reassurance for his wellbeing, but the tether in his chest has constricted around his bones, guiding and leading him without his permission.

Outside and behind the shop, his motorcycle sits propped in the back of the alley against the red brick. It’s automatic, the way he moves and the way he starts his bike with little thought.

He has no idea where he is going, mind almost completely blank except for the knowledge that he is living and he is moving.

He has no idea where he is going, but he knows he will be guided home.

\---

At the edge of town, tucked behind the cemetery and the old, abandoned chapel, the manor home stands tall, albeit no longer proud.

He remembers when the house used to be grand, a monument of new money and imperial wealth. The brick gleamed - impossible for such a texture to do such a thing, but, back then, everything about the house was grand and magical. The floor to ceiling windows and turret at the corner of the house were a marvel of modern architecture, the large yard a method of proclaiming status. Now, the lawn has died, weeded and overgrown from decades of lack of care. The windows are stained, not with glass but with dirt and grime, impossible to see through and, some, cracked. The brick has faded, morphed now into a brown that feels somewhat sad, longing to be loved back to life.

From time to time, Minseok would drive by the house, drawn to it either by memory or by a future nostalgia he could not quite place. It is not to say that it haunted him, rather that it called to him, demanded his attention at random, and released him mercifully once he had looked upon it. Today, he drives to the house without thought, not even focused on the call of the home or the route he takes, surprised to even see it at all when he arrives.

At first glance, all appears to be normal. The iron gate around the perimeter stands, rusted and weathered with time. Weeds spill over the edges, bushes overgrown and looking tragic. For a moment, everything is fine.

But then, he sees it.

Rather, he sees you.

You’re hard to see, standing near the bushes by the front steps small and slight. Hands on your hips, you stand with your head down, frowning at the yard and looking perplexed. You’re speaking, muttering something as though scolding yourself or even the land, and he can’t help but smile at the sight. Immediately, he recognizes you, though not your physical features.

Throughout the length of his life, his perception of those before him has rarely extended into the realm of energy. He senses the energy, always. It burrows inside him and touches his consciousness with eager, delighted hands, and so he is rarely caught off guard. On you, he sees everything. He sees your aura and the way your energy drapes itself around you, green and gold and terrifying. The comfort he finds from the sight of it rouses within him a knee jerk response of horror, drawn to you much the same way he is drawn to his brothers.

He’s yours.

This fact resonates within his mind, the only thing he can focus on for several minutes. He’s yours, and delighted, and starting to swoon just from the sight of you scolding the grass.

For a long while, he is content to watch you, learn your movements and match them to what he knows of your voice. Often, you jut your hip to the side, humorous and playful in your motions. Other times, you are graceful, elegant, bending to touch the grass and leaves, rising with a smile that reaches your eyes. His world narrows around you, his a flush spreading across his chest and cheeks as his vision darkens around everything except you. So lost he is in the sight of your neck and lips and hair, that he does not notice the flower that has bloomed within the palm of your hand.

Cradled between your grasp, a small pink flower blooms and blooms, growing into a full rose as you regard it with joy. His mouth goes dry, suddenly realizing that you are not merely a woman, you too are a witch, and you are likely just as powerful as he. And it’s when he notices the flower that his vision reverts and he sees that it is not just the flower that has grown, but the brush and earth surrounding you.

Life has bloomed into the world, the bushes turning a brighter shade of green. The weeds seem to have shrunk, reduced somehow and no longer crowding around your ankles. Bending slightly, you place the flower in your hand on top of the bush, whispering softly to it as more bloom around the bush. This is your version of gardening, an astounding sort of affair that turns you in a necromancer of the earth itself.

As if sensing his eyes on you, you straighten and turn to face him. Instantly, your expression falls, eyes going wide and cheeks starting to blanch. Even from this distance, he can see the way you falter and freeze, alarmed by him just the way he is wholly unprepared for the totality of you. For a long while, you simply take him in, eyes roaming over his shape and form. It feels different with you - truthfully, everything feels different with you, but your eyes and your touch are welcome. With you, he wants to be seen. With you, he is aching to be felt and admired, and never has he wished this so intensely before.

Wiping your hands, you walk towards him, the tether in his heart clenching tighter with each step you take. He feels you as a magnet, a pole luring him closer and making him lean forward, begging to be caught in your orbit.

Stopping just beyond the fence, your eyes cast downward to his bike, pursing your lips in displeasure. ‘Your bike is bad for the environment.’

It’s such a simple statement, but, to him, it’s everything. He would never love if it were so simple, and here you are, complicated and already so difficult. At once, he’s eager and impatient to have his fill of you, knowing well that to have his fill is an impossibility he will spend his life chasing.

‘So is every other car,’ he counters, meeting your challenging stare with ease.

You pout with a small huff, knowing that he’s right, but unwilling to let him win. ‘Well, it’s loud.’

Loudness. A thing he understands easily, for he has been accused of being loud and boisterous. And you, he’s heard you for days, possibly weeks, the sound of your voice an echo he has fought valiantly to catch, haunted.

‘Just like you,’ he smirks, impish. ‘And just like me.’

He can see the moment your guard drops, hesitantly welcoming him in and likely feeling the pull towards him as much as he. Questions burn in his mind, questions about your magic, about your skills, about what music you like, your opinion on french fries - though for that, he’s not entirely sure why.

They run through his mind, making him slightly dizzy with you, until he settles on one he feels is appropriate.

‘Did you just move in?’

‘Yes.’

Your answer is short and sharp, careful not to give too much away. A laugh rises in his throat, which he swiftly suppresses, knowing that you’re just as thrown by him as he is you. You both feel the other is a threat, yet neither of you can walk away.

‘Where are you from?’ he tries, keeping his tone pleasant and neutral. He already knows this answer, senses it around you even though he cannot place where the information comes from Still, he wants to hear you say it.

He simply wants to hear you.

‘I and the other girls I live with. It’s not just me.’ You blink for a few moments after you speak, blushing as you realize you offered to much information and also did not answer his question. The blush at your cheeks deepens, spreading across your chest the longer he looks at you, warm and expectant and glad for your closeness. ‘New York,’ you say, finally.

He nods, smiling at all the ways your accent emerges the longer you speak. ‘State or city?’

It catches him off guard, the deep timber of your surprised laugh the moment he says the words. He’s heard it before, and even then he thought it was loud and bright and entirely too gregarious to be anything other than the essence of joy. But hearing it now, from you and for him, he finds no true pleasure can compare.

The sound echoes through the sky and around the house, around his heart. It’s unprecedented, much the way you are, stirring within him feelings he long thought had dissolved.

‘What’s so funny?’ he laughs, infected by the noise of you.

You hum for a moment, eyes dancing around him and the scenery. To him you appear frenetic, suddenly too energetic to be contained, and he knows you’re flustered. The itch of knowledge scratches at the back of his mind, telling him the sound of his own laugh made your heart start to swell.

Eventually, you shake your head, an action so similar to his. ‘It’s nothing, just one of the girls would appreciate you knowing the difference. But yeah. The city.’

‘Must be hard being in a small town.’

This is not like him. Normally, the nature of small talk bored and frustrated him, small topics for small, self-centered minds. It’s incisive, this view, but it has served him well until this moment, until you. You, he finds, are the most interesting thing he’s ever seen.

‘Salem isn’t that small,’ you shrug, gesturing around you vaguely. ‘Besides, I love the nature. Lots of trees.’

‘I’m Minseok,’ he announces rather suddenly, surprising you both. Kicking the stand down for his bike, he steps off, approaching the iron fence with his hand extended.

He’s overwhelmed by the idea of touching you, brought forward all at once to touch your hand.

Narrowing your eyes slightly, you extend your hand and take his. ‘Y/N.’

The touch of your palm to his is electric, both of you inhaling a sharp breath as the current ripples up your arms. It lasts only for a second, he’s sure that quick, but for him this second extends into an eternity. It consumes the totality of his focus, his world and the length of his life overwhelmed with nothing but you.

You sigh at the touch, a longing sort of sound that makes him think you’ve waited an eternity for this, for him. You smile at him as though little else in your life matters, breath coming. rather shallow in the effort of tasting his cologne in the air.

He glances downward, choosing instead to regard your clasped hands as the mere sight of your face has already started to undo him. It is then that he notices the flower pattern, inky and dark, running from the tendon below your thumb into your wrist.

‘Nice flower tattoo,’ he says, releasing your hands to focus on speech. ‘What is that, baby’s breath?’

Furrowing your brow for a moment, you look confused and perplexed until you look down at your hand and brighten.

‘Yeah!’ you say, eyeing the tattoo with a small smile of affection before you raise your gaze to his. Narrowing your eyes, a habit he has come to find intoxicating, you frown. ‘How did you know? You’re the first person to get it right.’

For a moment, your question catches him off guard. He likes flowers, enjoyed them and nature and finds the softness they bring to the world far more magical than anything he could produce. But never would he be able to have discerned the phylum on his own.

Touching you, he quickly realizes, makes his magic all the more powerful, knowledge washing over him in waves he cannot hold back.

‘Lucky guess, I think,’ he offers, debating briefly if he should give himself away so soon. The argument does not last - you already have felt him. There is no point in being coy, not anymore. ‘I do palm readings, so maybe I felt it.’

Falling still, you simply look at him until understanding washes over your features. You expression falls slightly, unreadable. ‘Oh, you’re a psychic.’

You sound crestfallen, the knowledge that he’s a witch settling into your shoulders and making them fall. The shift in your energy shifts, a tension rooting itself in your spine that was not there before, even when he touched you.

‘Don’t sound so disappointed.’ He says the words attempting to be playful, certain that it sounds forced.

‘It’s not that, I promise,’ you exclaim, shaking your head vigorously to refute the claim. ‘Back in New York we had a lot of those.’

It’s common, he knows, the endless list of pseudo-psychics and half-believers who think they are powerful enough to read a person. Often, he is asked if he looks down on others who claim to be psychic or sensitive, and his answer is always the same: he does not. Truthfully, he pities them. He loves his magic, loves his power, and his patience for those who wish to exploit the idea of power is the only place it runs thin. He wishes others could be strong and accurate; he hopes those who lie and cheat strangers out of money, especially in a time of need, feel the grasp of karma’s cold fist.

‘Fakes?’ He doesn’t bother trying to sound polite.

‘Once,’ you begin, tone dry, ‘someone gave me a palm reading in hair rollers in their kitchen.’

He can see it, even though you don’t explain it.

Your delicate hand rests on the false oak table, the woman before you sits in her pajamas, mouth set in a thin line. She regards your hand as though she sees through it, barely attentive and sighing at the sight of your smooth skin. Behind the door to the kitchen, a child of ten years old sits and loudly talks at the television, distracting. She envies your youth, perhaps even your beauty, and this is what fills her read on you with disdain. Rather than let herself feel you and look at you, she simply imagines what someone like you would enjoy, what someone your age would do, rather than how you would perceive the world. She talks at you, vague and generic.

In the end, you ask for your money back.

‘Sounds like she read from a teleprompter.’

The words slip from his tongue, absentmindedly unable to hold them back. He’s caught up in the sight of you, your rolled eyes and the way you struggle not to laugh in her face. He doesn’t mean to say it, to give his magic away so soon, but for you he’s willing to give and give, and it only feels natural.

‘I’d be interested in one from you,’ you admit, smirking at how easily he will let you win and will bend only for you.

Already you can tell, and so can he.

He doesn’t bother to hide his pleasure. ‘Whenever!’

He’d be embarrassed by his enthusiasm if he did not feel it so intensely. All at once, he wants every day and every moment to be full of you, enjoyed with and around you, and he does not know how to want anything less than everything.

Shifting from foot to foot, you regard him for a moment before casting your eyes down to your feet. Daisies have bloomed, growing up to your ankles. You smile at them, laughing in surprise at their existence.

He’s overstayed his welcome - had broken rules and boundaries the moment he saw you, and decided to stay. The longer he remains near you, the harder it will be to leave, and already he can feel the weight of the world changing around him. Tucked behind his joy, elation, and the fluttering rhythm of his heart, he feels the fear. His palms have started to sweat, the trait of unparalleled unease and anxiety coursing through his veins.

The world has started to change, the chirping of birds becoming a sound dark and foreboding, and for a long while he had managed to ignore it. Now, it demands his attention, and looking at you he does his best not to fixate on the way the sound is born by your presence alone.

Your closeness changes the rules and laws of nature, and that he knows is how this all begins.

‘I’m going to go now,’ he mutters, struggling to keep his voice steady and calm.

‘Yeah,’ you agree. ‘I should get back to…this.’

It’s easier than he thinks it would be, leaving you, even though he hates it. His skin crawls the further from you he gets, the drone of his bike a white noise that soothes the turmoil that has started to burn at the base of his stomach. He hates it, but the pressure at the center of his forehead eases the more distance he puts between you.

That night, his dreams are contaminated, stained. The nightmares have been plaguing him for weeks but now they are clear, vivid pictures of how the world ends or, perhaps, how this world started. Black witches move through the night, their forms undefined and faces completely featureless. They hover off the ground, low enough they appear to touch the earth but far enough away to instill fear. Back then, they sucked and sucked all the energy from every living thing.

It’s not that they were inhuman, simply that they had let themselves become engulfed in the darkness that lurks at the back of human consciousness. Teeth and tongue soaked in the blood of the innocent, they raised the dead from the earth and relished the blood breath their fingers.

The dead walked, mortals bled. They did not just bleed, they were eviscerated, mutilated by a power they would never understand. Children had their youth stolen, life and souls sucked from their shocked, open mouths. Women carried fiends within their wombs, unbeknownst to them and caught in the throes of a pregnancy they could only call violent.

In the midst of it all, your face emerges from the black. Face bloodstained, you cry and scream, a vengeance tearing your vocal cords apart, yet still you scream through the pain.

Minseok wakes with a violent start, gasping for breath as he struggles not to vomit. You’re all over him, all over and inside him, and the nausea burns at the back of his throat. Down the hall, Yixing screams. It’s louder than usual, voice reduced to little more than something savage.

Yixing screams, though, tonight, Minseok is unsure if he was the only one.

\---

Minseok can feel you in the shop before he sees you.

Midway through a reading for a grief stricken woman, you wash over him much like static electricity. The hairs on the back of his arms stand on end, roused and waiting for you to feel him. It takes him several moments to regather his thoughts, diverting his focus back to the woman before him. She deserves his attention, deserves far more than the hand she has been dealt, and so he closes himself to you.

The mere thought of doing this makes a sharp pain from him his chest, the denial of you unnatural. At the same, time, the dread begins to return to the tips of his fingers, turning the joints numb. Idly, he wonders if it will always be this way, if having you close will be a permanent duality, a thing he will always crave and always dread.

Still, he works through his reading, attentive to the energy of his client. Her questions and her needs are valid, and so it goes quickly even if it does not go easily.

When he finishes, he guides his client through curtain, lingering slightly behind to let his eyes find you. He hugs her, something he does not usually do, but feels compelled to. This, he thinks, is an effect of your energy, turning into someone compassionate and warm. The difference is welcome, a state of mind he rarely exists within, the sensation of it sweet.

As she leaves, his attention returns to you, watching the way you follow Baekhyun around the store.

‘I’m looking for anything you have on herbalism,’ you say, smiling as you take in Baekhyun’s energy.

‘Oh boy, so much.’ He takes you to the shelf, fingers stroking at the spines of several old books. ‘It really depends on what you’re looking to do with it. Some of the texts we have are pretty esoteric, but to be honest those are my favourite.’

‘I love esoteric.’ Reaching for a book with a faded black leather spine, you glance at Baekhyun with a playful, yet serious, expression. ‘As long as it’s not in the form of a question.’

‘Boy, do I relate,’ Baekhyun agrees with a laugh.

‘It’s why I love herbalism so much.’ Pulling the book from the shelf, you thumb through the pages with interest. The text you’ve chosen is old, likely late nineteenth century, the pages browned and fraying at the edges. ‘There’s rules to it, strict patterns. The combinations can change, and in the realm of creation it’s pretty free. But each plant has certain qualities. If you learn them, you can do anything.’

Baekhyun nods, pensive. ‘I tried learning it once, but…’

Closing the book and putting it back, you let your fingers walk over spines once more, seeking something specific. ‘It takes a lot of studying, so don’t blame yourself.’

‘It just wasn’t for me I guess,’ he sighs, somewhat disappointed.

The jealousy hits him, swiftly and without warning. Baekhyun’s closeness turns him into someone possessive, greedy for your eyes on him, his hands, his neck. He can picture the feel of your hands on him, or rather, his hands on you, marveling at the softness you offer him. Not having this reprieve makes him anxious, and so he steps forward from the curtain, letting his body draw him towards you.

The closer he gets, the more his energy brightens, a smile pulling at his lips and rendering him awed.

‘Hello again,’ he tries, rarely one to be so social and unsure of how to begin.

At the sound of his voice, you turn to face him, clearly shaken by the sound. The sight of you, glowing in your yellow raincoat makes his heart clench in his chest, red lipstick magnified by the brightness of the shade. You too seem to be caught off guard by his presence, eyes wide and lips parted in surprise. Around you both, the energy shifts, changing into one of comfort and then into one of need in a matter of seconds.

You delight one another, and the change in both your demeanors makes Baekhyun fall silent.

‘Are you following me?’ you tease.

Slinging his hands in his denim pockets, he hums playfully before shaking his head. ‘I work here.’

Your gaze dances around the shop, regarding it in new light as you take it in within his presence. It’s slow, the way you take in the set up, admiring the colour of the hardwood and the somewhat cluttered aesthetic. Things in here should be dusty and forgotten - they get told that a lot. That the shop looks to be a home for things long lost and forgotten. Sometimes, he believes they are right.

Today, he imagines they all have been found.

‘This is where you do the readings?’ Your right hand gestures behind him, towards the curtain to the back room.

Eyes following your tattoo, he mumbles distractedly. ‘Yeah, I own this place with my brothers.’

‘Brothers?’ Your gaze flashes back to Baekhyun before quickly returning to him, confused. ‘You’re all related?’

Saying it means it will give him away. He’s sure you already know, that you’ve figured it out through inference and context clues - through magic of your own, but he has yet to prove himself to you. The truth alone will be enough, and he does not bother to hide.

‘By choice,’ he announces, watching your posture stiffen and Baekhyun turn white, the lights in the building flickering. Baekhyun excuses himself, muttering something about checking the fuse box and leaving you both alone. ‘Which,’ he continues, ‘ultimately is sometimes more important.’

‘It’s the same for us.’ After you speak, you press your lips tightly together, startled by your own honesty. Shifting your weight from foot to foot, hip jutting as you move and making his chest feel warm, you change the subject. ‘Do you want to make good on the palmistry offer?’

It’s his turn to stiffen, iron suddenly taking shape in the base of his spine and rooting him to the earth. ‘Are you sure?’

‘I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t.’

Even now, he knows you well enough to know you don’t say things you don’t mean, holding steadfast to your convictions even when they make your soul tremble.

For a moment, you simply regard one another, knowing what this will mean. There is a level of intimacy that comes with palmistry - even those who do not practice know and accept this. It requires touch, a touch that extends all the way down into the crevices of existence. Allowing yourself to be read requires a vulnerability that comes from willingly showing another all your flaws and all your inherent mistakes; to read a person requires the will to see their flaws and to not judge them, to bear witness to them just as they are.

Eventually, he nods, the desire to feel you once again winning out over the sudden onslaught of intimacy.

Leading you behind the curtain, he watches you slide into the chair, dropping yourself inelegantly to keep the tension at bay.

‘How do you do this?’ you ask, breaking through the silence. ‘What’s your style.’

Sitting across from you, he tries to be just as playful and finds that, with you, the playfulness doesn’t come. It’s hard for him to focus on anything other than the onslaught of knowledge that will fill him and take hold of him.

‘Well,’ he begins, ‘show me your dominant hand, and we’ll go from there.’

Placing your right hand on the table, palm up and fingers relaxed, you bite your lip as your sit on your left. It’s the effort to keep yourself from touching back, from letting yourself feel, too. Once again, the baby’s breath tattoo catches his eye, settling the pace of his heart.

Allowing himself to look, to truly see your hand, he feels his cheeks begin to flush. Gently, he grazes the skin of your palm with the tips of his fingers, barely there touches that traces the creases in your skin and make you release a small sigh of pleasure. Biting your lip, you peer up at him through your lashes, and he feels the heat of your stare pierce through the realm of his senses. The pleasure of touching you, of feeling you like this, builds, a gladness spreading within him that makes the rest of him scream out in the desire to feel you.

This, of course, compares little to the act of seeing. Seeing the smooth lines of your skin, the long, delicate length of your fingers, the shape of your palm, the swirl of your fingerprints - the swirl of you. In seeing you like this, he feels you - he feels the way you process the world and the way emotions linger and take root within you. He feels you down into the barren chambers of his heart, feels you and lets you stay.

‘You have water hands,’ he murmurs, grazing his fingers over the skin below your thumb, making you shiver. ‘I didn’t expect to see that.’

‘What does that mean,’ you whisper, working to keep your voice even and calm.

‘Sorry,’ he says, shaking his head and pulling his hand back to gather his thoughts. ‘I’m going to say something and I don’t want you to think I’m being forward or rude.’

It’s hard for him to reconcile this, the knowledge that there is an awareness between you both even while you struggle to maintain the pretense. To him, it feels like lies, lies gathering and lies building, and he cannot continue knowing you know his truth, yet still pretending not to know about palmistry. Still, this was meant as a challenge, and if he truly is going to prove himself, he needs to lay everything bare, exposing the raw truth of everything that surrounds you.

You laugh, leaning forward to mockingly whisper, ‘I think everything about the way we met was forward.’

‘You’re a witch,’ he states plainly, keeping his expression neutral, testing your limits.

Leaning back in your seat, you shrug and cross your arms. ‘So are you.’

The honesty is a relief, a thing that lifts from his shoulders and clears a fog he did not know existed between you both.

‘Knowing this,’ he continues, resting his hands in his lap and digging his nails into the skin to keep from reaching out for you, ‘how come you want the reading?’

‘I want you to prove yourself to me.’

A thrill runs down his spine, adrenaline starting to pump at the prospect of showing you his strength, his accuracy, and his true magnificence. Still, there is more truth hidden behind your voice, a deeper reason and meaning you keep tucked away from him, secret.

‘And?’ he presses.

Shifting awkwardly in your seat momentarily, you bite your lip and look down into your lap, contemplating if you want to speak. He senses it’s not anything desire or pressing, rather a detail - a detail you are unsure you want to offer so soon. Quickly though, your wall breaks, cracks formed in the concrete because you give yourself over to him the same way he gives himself to you: totally and without hesitation.

‘And also because we don’t have a psychic in our coven,’ you admit, before quickly amending you statement. ‘Well, in your sense. My sisters can read tarot.’

Images of your coven flood his mind, vague and unclear, the faces without features but their essences warm and powerful. He feels no connection to them, not really, but feels them as important merely because they are important to you, each one looming in the corners of the darkness as pillars of fortitude and unprecedented power.

‘That takes considerable energy,’ he provides, knowing that to even accurately discern tarot can drain person if they aren’t well trained.

‘Yes and no.’ Placing your hand back on the table, study the shape of your hand. ‘They don’t do it to divine the future, not really. It’s most guidance from a psychological point. Their magic is extraordinary, but different. We all have intuition - everyone does - but not like this.’ Fixing your gaze on his, intense and demanding, you smirk. ‘I want to see you do it.’

Like this, he finds you intimidating, rational and old. He sees you always as you appear, young and youthful and incomprehensibly beautiful, but it strikes him then you are old. Old and wise, and absolutely everything, including his equal.

Chuckling quietly to himself at your intensity, he places your hand back in his, his fingers stroking over yours once more. ‘Okay, well,’ he starts, ‘you have water hands. This means a few things, but it makes sense to me, at least a little, why you would. You’re the water for the earth, a natural point of life for them.’ Your aura returns to him, radiating off of you and swelling into the fringes of his vision. You are synonymous with nature, with the earth, and with healing, and it is this that reminds him he has yet to demand the truth of your magic. ‘Are you a potions mistress?’

Barking out a laugh, you let your head fall back, eyes closed in crescent moons at the concept. ‘Are you asking if I’m like Professor Snape?’

Yet again infected by your laugh, he grins. ‘Do you want to be?’

‘Absolutely not.’

‘Then no, nothing like Snape.’ Absentmindedly, he slides his fingers between yours, luxuriating in the feel of your skin. ‘Just wanted to know how you use your magic.’

Visibly you soften, entranced by feel of his skin. You move your fingers against his, grounding his touch as though you have long hungered for the memory. ‘I make balms,’ you say, slowly, speech somewhat lazy, ‘sometimes you could call them potions. They’re mostly for healing. People don’t realize how much the Earth wants to heal us, how much she gives us. Though, that’s not really the truth of my power.’

‘I saw you talking to the grass.’

‘It talks back, you know.’ Running your thumbs over his knuckles, your raise your eyes to his once more, and now he thinks he’s truly seeing you. You’re regal, infinitely more impressive and glorious than he could ever have perceived, likely born with the Earth. ‘All plants do. They have so much to say, especially the trees.’

Unsure what to say to this, he merely nods, imagining all the wondrous and mystifying ways you speak to the whole extremity of the world. Instead, he continues to read your palm, speaking of things he knows, with confidence, rather than the secrets of life that have been kept from him, offered to your heart only. It matters to him, getting this right and getting you right, so much so he cannot help but continue to lean forward until his chest is pressed directly against the table. 

Working along your hand, he explains palmistry to you - what your lines mean, what the shapes denote, and what the texture of your skin reveals. He’s desperate to be on you, on and inside you, and he swallows thickly as he speaks, hoping you do not notice how deeply he yearns for you.

As he speaks, he is invaded by visions of you speaking with the trees. Your hands run along the bark, eyes closed and lips parted as your murmur their truths to nothing and no one. You see things as he does, although the source is different and wholly more clear in perspective, method of operating in the world entirely dictated by the magic you bring to it. He watches you garden, garden by hand and garden by speech, whispering reassurances to the dull, broken splinters of the grass and nursing them back to health. Picking herbs that continue to bloom in your hands, you create salves the feed and heal, a saviour he does not deserve.

Tracing the length of your lifeline with the tip of his finger, he sees you as a child, someone free and brave and hold life by its throat. As he continues, he sees you as an adult, different now and more cautious, careful in the way you speak and think, hardened by the direction your life had moved and missing something you did not know had been misplaced. You are rational and structured, logic preceding every thought and action, and as he watches you grow he realizes you are the cooling balm the fire that rages in his heart.

You are the thought and the result of every choice he has ever made.

And it is this realization that makes his vision change, no longer just you alone but him with you. The snow falls on the trees at Christmas, quiet and delicate, but sounding to you as wind-chimes in the air. Here, he kisses you, kisses you first with his mouth and then with his soul, pressing you to him without fear of death or punishment. And even as he thinks this, he sees the trees fall into a state of decay. They are soaked, from the snow and the blood and the bodies nailed into their branches, but still he does not fear.

There is an answer, he hears, he simply needs to find it.

He needs to find it with you.

‘I know you’re seeing me.’

The sound of your voice cuts through his visions, penetrating enough to startle him and send a chill down his spine.

‘You can feel it?’ he whispers, searching for words through the fog and haze of his mind.

‘You?’ Taking him in, you briefly fall silent, unsure if you are willing to give yourself away, only to decide it no longer matters. ‘Always.’

‘How does it feel for you?’

Minseok is sure he’s never wanted to know anything more - a thing he can never know. He will know your life and your experiences, will know your choices, and may even know things you will never live to see, alternate pathways you could have taken had you simply chose differently, but he will never know how you feel.

For a long while, you remain silent, choosing your words carefully as you stare at him sweetly. ‘Transcendent. Invasive, like I’m being changed and am no longer myself. Terrible.’ Once more you pause, preparing yourself for the truth in the wake of such a violent admission. ‘Thrilling.’

‘Do you see me?’

This is a question he has never asked, never asked because he never cared. Now, and with you, it is the only thing he has ever wanted. You, he thinks, are the only one he will ever let see the untarnished truth of his entire, ancient existence.

‘Sometimes,’ you hum, ‘if I let you in enough.’

Cocking his head to the side, he smiles softly, running his fingers over the back of your hand affectionately. ‘What do you see?’

‘Things you’ve done. How old you are.’ Winking, you smirk at him. ‘Old man.’

Mocking offense, he gasps. ‘Hey, now.’

‘I just…’ Your words fade, gaze softening with concern.

‘Yeah?’

‘Who showed you those horrors?’ you ask, compassionate and concerned. ‘The horrors of the way you see the world. You weren’t born with them.’

Even with your compassion, your words are critical, almost too discerning for him to stomach without feeling vulnerable. He knows you mean his aggressive perception of the world, the almost tragic way your outlook on life had warped over the long years of your life. It implies someone made him see the world this way, almost as if he did not choose this for himself.

Suddenly out of control of too many things, he finds he has no answer, looking down at your fingers as he lets your hands relax, falling to the side.

And as he does this, as he reclines in the intense way you tore at him and reduced him to little more than a boy, he sees that every line and shape in your palm matches his.

\---

‘Did you touch her?’

Days later, Junmyeon is furious. There’s something blissful about the state of rage that grips him, a rawness to the fear that exists beyond understanding and rational thought.

It’s the first time the group has been gathered back into the kitchen since the discussion of Yixing’s nightmares, albeit this time it is evening. Moonlight filters through the windows, clashing with the harsh fluorescent light that illuminates the room. It yellows the room, turning everyone’s skin an unnatural shade that makes them appear jaundiced with unease. They sit at the table while Junmyeon stands, crossing his arms and often pacing, using the motion to gather his thoughts, clutching to the first words that rise out of the black. To Minseok, it does not matter when or how Baekhyun told Yixing about his discovery of you, only that he did. He did, and Junmyeon had heard as well.

Keeping his composure, his voice even and calm, he tries to speak. ‘Jun -’

Junmyeon cuts him off. ‘Just answer the question, Min.’

He was always like this out of necessity, cold and rational to a fault, often unable to perceive beyond his own perspective; the eldest in age and the leader because he was the second in command. The second in command during the Great War, witnessing the death of their original guide with a scream that lingered on his lips well past the nineteenth century. It changed him them, into someone wrought with emotion and unwilling to feel them at all.

And so he leads with cool thought, unbreakable, for fear of being broken himself once more.

‘Did you touch her?’ he repeats, keeping his eyes trained on Minseok.

This time, when he asks the question, Minseok can tell he already knows the answer. The words matter, and that is why he wants to hear the confirmation, so that his mind can rationalize the war that’s already started to boil beneath their unsteady hands. Minseok would never lie, would give his brothers anything they ever asked for, but hesitates before he speaks. This kind of honesty is brutal, leaves a death toll in its wake, and saying the truth out loud means adding his brothers to the execution list.

Closing his eyes, he runs his hand through his hair and sighs. ‘I had to.’ The admission tastes sour on his tongue, a thing that should have been so very sweet.

‘God fucking dammit.’

Junmyeon turns his back on him, growling out the words with a derision that feels too heavy and cruel for such a small room. Yixing releases a long breath, casting his eyes to the table as he pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose, nodding minutely.

‘I shouldn’t have said anything,’ Baekhyun mutters, voice small. He sighs to himself, weighing the value and worth of telling the group, and wondering if he should have kept silent instead.

‘It’s not like I went and sought her out,’ Minseok retorts, frustrated by the oppressive tension in the room.

Beside him, Chanyeol releases a wet cough, long having given up on balancing the energy of those around him, choosing instead to keep himself placid and unafraid. He chews at his bottom lip, so much he could or would say running through his mind, but keeping himself silent by force of will. At the sound, Junmyeon turns back to face him, jaw tight and set.

‘Baek said you had already spoken to her when you saw her at the shop.’ Junmyeon digs his fingers into his sweater, nails appearing as claws hoping to press crescents into his arms. ‘How many times had you met?’

‘Just the one, I’m serious,’ he snaps, narrowing his eyes at Junmyeon’s implied accusation. ‘Why is this a fucking interrogation?’

‘Oh, don’t act like you’re surprised,’ Junmyeon spits, sarcasm dripping from his words like poison. ‘You knew - you fucking knew the consequences, and you just gave in? You know what it means for us, and you’re making choices that tell me you don’t give a shit that nearly all our ancestors died trying to protect the last of us.’

‘Fuck you, Jun.’ Pushing his chair away from the table, the angry clatter of wood on tile erupts through the room. It sounds just as vicious as he feels, and he leaps to his feet, approaching Junmyeon with blood that feels like venom. ‘You really think I woke up one morning and thought it would be fun to go find her? That I just suddenly didn’t give a fuck about anyone even after we’ve spent how many fucking weeks watching Yixing dislocate his jaw in the middle of the night?

Rolling his eyes, Junmyeon frowns. ‘You know what I mean.’

‘No, I fucking don’t. You have absolutely no idea what this is like.’ He moves through the kitchen, joints tight with fury. It feels almost like a rapture, a great release of all the things he has kept tight and locked at the back of his throat; words he never thought he’d say spill freely, lips dripping with their stain. ‘Don’t sit there all high and mighty, pretending it’s the easiest thing in the world. I don’t get to choose anymore. My body leads me to her and makes choices, and I don’t get a goddamn say. I just find her and finally, for the first fucking time in my life, happy to be around someone that isn’t a member of this coven. I get new perspectives with her, new ideas. She’s from somewhere that isn’t this hellscape, and I get to love her because I’m hers and she’s just as powerful as any one of us.’

‘Hey,’ Yixing interrupts gently. ‘He wasn’t insulting her.’

‘I don’t care if he was or wasn’t,’ he persits, meeting each one of them in the eye for several seconds to make his point. ‘I don’t get to choose any fucking part of this, but I’ll be damned if it isn’t worthwhile.’

‘Isn’t that the point?’ Junmyeon says, exasperated. ‘We’re supposed to feel that way around them. We will want to break the seals.’

‘You have no fucking clue,’ he almost laughs, amazed that, even after all of this, he still isn’t being heard. ‘I don’t want to break the seal, literally at all. Why can’t you fucking understand that? Every time I’m around her or think about her, I see the war and the future all over again at the same time. Everyone fucking dies - I get to watch all of you die in front of me. And I get to have headaches and anxiety and the nightmares, and I get to fucking remember it.’ At this, he turns to Yixing and casts a powerful stare, reminding him that they both are suffering. ‘But still I can’t deny her.’

Pressing his face into his hands, Chanyeol leans his elbows on the table and sighs. ‘There’s no way we can stop this, is there.’

‘Our palms match.’

Even when he says it, he knows it’s a spiteful thing to say, even if it’s true. It should be something he offers for discussion, rather than as a means to fuel the flames of an argument, but still he says it. He’s proud of it, glad that he gets to be yours - your partner, your lover, your unmaking just as you are the same for him. He’s glad that his magic will serve yours, glad that he will stand by you, and he’s tired of denying himself the pleasure.

But he says it as a means of proving a point, a way of proving himself right rather than proving his commitment.

Chanyeol lifts his hands from his eyes, regarding Minseok in shock while Baekhyun stares, open mouthed and pale. Yixing looks as though he simply does not understand, mind able to process great and terrible things yet somehow, unable to fathom the gravity of this. A chill runs through the room, penetrates the holes in his long sweater and makes him shiver - a chill he invited in simply because he could no longer lie. It leaves smears along his skin and spine, works its way into his pores and turns his bones to ice.

Junmyeon stands still, body carved from marble and the most still he has been all evening. His eyes swim, expression unreadable as he looks at Minseok.

‘What?’ he whispers, disbelieving and sounding almost betrayed.

‘I don’t know if it’s true for everyone,’ he shrugs, unable to be anything other than glad, ‘but the marks on her palm match mine.’

‘Has that ever happened?’ Chanyeol asks, sounding hopeful, even though he already knows the answer.

‘No,’ he shakes his head. ‘Not to me and not to anyone.’

‘She was made to be your weakness, it makes sense you’d share a life path,’ Yixing reasons, staring up at the ceiling as though searching for a benevolent god to see them through this.

‘She wasn’t made to be anyone’s.’ On this he is adamant. You are old, possibly older than him, possibly born with the world, and you are glorious, a noble thing he does not deserve to hold. You do not belong to him, you simply share a beginning and an ending, unavoidable and unwitting, even though he feels as though he belongs to you. ‘She’s just my match.’

‘I think you’re grossly underestimating the gravity of those words,’ Junmyeon sneers, appalled by the direction of this conversation. ‘Having a match means you are bonded to a duality, a light and a dark. And you can’t deny that. You said yourself that you see how it all ends, and you feel the pain of that. Having her as a match was never going to be simple.’

All at once, Minseok doesn’t have it him to be angry anymore. Now that he’s let himself love you, know that he’s let himself accept that he cannot crave anything or anyone but you, he finds that toying with denials or plans to keep himself away are useless.

He will bring about the end of the world, and he will do so with the taste of your skin on his tongue, smiling.

‘You really don’t get it do you,’ he whispers, looking at Junmyeon with an amazement tarnished by pity.

‘It doesn’t matter anymore. None of this matters,’ Yixing announces, waving his hands and settling the oncoming storm before it can begin. ‘The seals are starting to break. We can’t go back into the past and stop it. We just need to know how to deal with it.’

Cocking his head back, Junmyeon releases a sigh that comes as a hiss, lungs tense with displeasure. ‘We don’t even know what the seals are,’ he counters, annunciating each word with precision. ‘How do we know he didn’t open all ten when he met her?’

Scoffing, Minseok leans against the wall and sneers. ‘Stop talking about me like I’m not here.’ Junmyeon lowers his eyes and regards him with a cocked eyebrow, challenging him to say more. ‘Besides,’ he continues, ignoring Junmyeon’s contempt, ‘wouldn’t we have noticed some kind of difference?’ He regards each of them with an unimpressed expression, imploring them to chime in, for he cannot fathom that they would not have felt such a cosmic shift within the universe. ‘Honestly, would we not know the difference between a bad omen and the feeling of a fuckign seal? Like, are we truly so ignorant?’

‘That’s the problem, Min,’ Junmyeon says, patronizing, ‘we don’t fucking know. It could be literally anything and we’d never fucking know.’

‘This is so fucking stupid.’

Tired of talking, Minseok pushes from the wall and turns to take his leather coat from the hook. The thought of remaining in the kitchen turns his blood into liquid fire, burning through his veins and putting a flush across his neck that makes his skin itch. With every accusation and every countered defense, the room shrinks, and now he sees it more as a cage than a room for democratic discussion.

Throwing his coat over his shoulders, he turns back to the room and fixes Junmyeon with a cold stare. ‘We’re talking ourselves in circles.’

Pulling his keys from his pocket, he walks towards the door, waving vaguely to the others as he moves.

‘Where are you going?’ Junmyeon calls after him.

‘To break a fucking seal,’ he shouts, unsure why he said it at all as he walks to his bike.

\---

When he arrives at the old manor house, your house, he realizes he does not know how he got there or why he is there. Kicking the stand down on his bike, he walks to the iron gate and stands, trapped in a mix of bewilderment and alarm.

He left the house in a state of directionless irritation, fists hungry for the vibration of the road to empty his mind. The rumble of the bike became his sole focus, the faded yellow lines of the street expanding before him and blossoming into something limitless. It was not that he wanted to get away from Junmyeon, not even that he did not agree with him, simply that he firmly believes there is no answer.

For this, there is only the inevitability of _life._

Life, he thinks, is a cycle. A cycle of endings that, when laid together for comparison, all look the same. The ending of this world is uncontested - it will happen whether it is brought by his hand or someone else’s, and the only sure thing he can see, at the very end of it all, is that all that your connection will bring is pain. It hurts to not touch you, much the same way it hurts to touch you - one born from the agony of distance and the denial of the heart and the other an omen that splits his head and fills him with dread.

This life will hurt, whether he has you or not.

Placing his hands on the gate, he regards your door and lets the voices of his brothers fill his mind.

So many things, he knows, could have been seals, things warning him you were here, warning him of his love, warning him you are ending the world with him. Junmyeon had a point, was right in the caution of his fear, but still would never understand the way it hurts to deny you. In his mind, he counts all the things that could have been seals, and wonders if, had he known, he would have stayed away.

Yixing screams in the middle of the night, after years of deep, peaceful rest. The night he started screaming, so too did Minseok find himself caught in the throes of a nightmare, witnessing death as though he were a reaper himself. Dreams, he knows, hold an unprecedented amount of information, taking hold of him once he is vulnerable and open in a way he does not let himself be in the daylight. Had it just been these things, Minseok thinks he still would have wound up here, choosing the same all over again.

He arrived at your door in the harsh light of the sun, drawn to you, not unlike tonight, unannounced and mystified by the direction his hands chose. Remaining separate from you, a thing he was very good at doing with other people, was never a thing he could consider, even though he tried, valiantly. This too, he thinks, could have been a seal, a great change in the manor of his personality, a shift in his perspective he would never have welcomed on his own.

But still, he would be here.

And then, of course, there was the way your palms matched, the way his mind slips around you and the way the world narrows when he remembers he is yours. You yourself could be a seal, a seal meant to destroy only him, an arrow and a dagger to his heart he would willingly press against his most malleable pieces, ready to bleed for you.

You follow him too, circling around him in a way he thinks is too specific to be coincidental, winding up at his store as though you had been drawn to it from the start.

Everything about the way you were lured together had been a seal, had been something, and he was unable to deny that Junmyeon was right - he would never know which seal he had broken, if he had broken any at all, because it all felt like bliss.

For months, he’s felt the consequences of breaking the seals, felt them and understood them, remembered them, and did nothing to manage them. Guilt lingers at the base of his throat, a solid thing that makes it hard for him to swallow as he considers the way his coven will crumble if he follows through with the whims of his body. They had survived oblivion once, soaked and aghast and begging to die if it meant they would forget, and he is unsure they could do it again.

And still, he debates why he is there, staring at the door and hoping you can feel him through the wood.

He can feel you, always he feels you when he is in close proximity to your beating heart.

You are flush and abundant with life, an intoxicating thing he lets himself get drunk on. Even at this distance, he can feel the weight of your energy, vital and pure and filling him with delight. Like feathers on his skin, you gentle move down the length of his body, scintillating all that you find, and he sighs, mouth growing wet as though tasting you, greedy for more.

Sensing his presence, you pull open the door, standing straight and tall and watching him with eyes that penetrate down into the core of his being. He lurches forward, remembering with a chuckle that the gate stands in his way, and he smirks at the sound of your loud laugh.

‘I felt you coming,’ you say, words echoing into the night as you approach him. Hugging yourself through your cardigan, you bite your lip. ‘Odd, because that’s not my power.’

‘I don’t know why I showed up,’ he admits, feeling his heart stutter in its rhythm as he takes you in. 'I just had to.’

'I want to invite you inside, but I don’t know what that will do.’

There’s a sadness to your energy, the kind that comes from just as many and just as heavy discussions as the one he has had tonight. Momentarily, he grieves and mourns for the life you both could have had, had things been easy. He wishes this were simple, wishes that it would not matter that you loved each other, that it would not influence the direction of the universe, and that he could touch you without wondering how many bodies he would count in the morning.

'I know you won’t make a choice unless you’re sure of it,’ he says, advising you merely by being confident in your judgement.

'Come inside,’ you say, sure of yourself and words clear. 'I want you to come inside.’

Pulling open the gate and letting the creak speak your acceptance, you step back to let him through, and he lingers before you, meeting your gaze and your height.

It takes effort not to pull you to him, body tense with the desire to feel your skin beneath them, to press into the flesh of your arms, back, and neck, keeping you against him even as the world around you turns to ash.

You regard him with an affection he finds intense, your own intensity make his throat feel cry and constricted with desire. The inexplicable power of you floors him, and for a moment he is glad that you are drowning just as much as he.

Saying nothing, you turn and walk towards the house, the leaves on the ground moving out of your way, as though genuflecting on your approach.

Inside the house, you lead him quickly up the stairs, and for this, he is glad. It looks the same as he remembers it, albeit decorated now with things that belong to you and your coven. Your quick movements stop him from comparing things as they are now to as they used to be, to the war that brews and the war that happened. The stairs still creak in all the same places, the railing still warped from time and from accidental, unpracticed magic. Photos line the walls, photos of you and your friends, photos of places he has not been, and trees he knows are indigenous to California.

These things are a comfort, even though they fill him with dread.

The stained glass window in the hallway has been cleaned, dusted away and cleared of the grime. He remembers the night this window was made, how they had laughed and created something felt was beautiful, a tree as a symbol of life, a symbol of their coven. For a long while, he stares at it, remembering the way Luhan had smiled and smiled, and said he was proud of everyone, proud of their bond and their magic.

When he pulls himself away, he finds you lingering at your bedroom door, regarding him with a quizzical brow. He says nothing, merely walks into your room and finds that he is overwhelmed.

The first thing he notices is the smell, the unique scent of you is all over a room he recognizes all too well. As he moves through the room, he moves through time and he moves through you, feeling his clothes become saturated. Books line the walls, books on flowers, herbs, types of trees; books of fiction, long fantasy series partnered with playbooks, playbills, and poetry. Music is scattered around the room, records and CD’s, pictures of old crooners and sheet music he suddenly wishes he could hear you play.

He stands in the center of the room, turning and turning, until he finally faces you, leaning against the door with a blush playing at your cheeks. At the sight of you, he swoons, floored all over again by the way you arrest him. Even as you stand, you search him, hungry and pleased, surprised he is there just as much as he.

 

‘We’re breaking a seal just by doing this,’ you announce, moving from the door to stand before him, though you don’t sound cautionary. You simply say the words, allowing him to hold them in his palms and waiting to see what he will do.

Again, your presence around him is magnetic, raising the hairs on his arms and drawing him closer. ‘You know about them.’

He takes a step forward, cautious yet unable and unwilling to deny the force of you, to deny himself of you.

‘We’ve felt them, too,’ you nod, before adding, ‘I feel it too, in the trees.’

Cocking his head to the side, he smiles at the way your lips and tongue give shape to language, hypnotized by the lopsided angle of your mouth. ‘What about the trees?’

Your gaze dances over him, taking in the fullness of his lips and the corners of his eyes; he can feel you walk over him, touching him without touching, turning him into a map of your longing. ‘I see what happened here every time I touch them. The rings inside the bark have so many stories.’

‘What do they say?’ he asks, lifting one hand to remained poised just above the smooth slope your shoulder.

And all over again, his vision narrows, mind and body consumed by the irresistible closeness of your presence. The heat of your body radiates upward into the palm of his hand, his energy and skin grazing the edge of your aura, mixing it into one.

‘Murmurs of powerful women being disruptive,’ you explain, eyes closed and luxuriating in his closeness. You seem to tremble at the feel of his energy blurring with yours, lost and swaying as though you are at sea. 'Bringing too much power to one place, making it into an epicenter.’

He glides his hand down over your shoulder and along the length of your arm, watching your aura change from green to pink, elated with the magic you sense from his fingers. ‘Do they tell you about the seals?’ he murmurs, watching you intently, pleasure filling the crevices of his weary bones.

‘No,’ you shake your head, blinking to clear your head of him, only to close them once more, drowning. ‘I don’t know what they are, only that we shouldn’t keep seeing one another.’

Lowering his hand away from you, he clenches his fist. ‘Do you want that?’

Opening your eyes at the sudden loss of him, you frown. ‘No,’ you pout, glancing down at his hands.

The expression of loss that swims in your eyes makes his resolve cave, hand reaching for your wrist and relishing the softness he finds just below your palm. He strokes over your veins, tracing them over and over with the pad of his index finger, memorizing you. ‘I can’t stop thinking about you, even though it hurts.’

‘I’ve had a headache since I met you,’ you admit, reaching for his opposite hand, greedy for your own contact. ‘You’ve been the one touching me.’ Turning his hand over your, stroke your fingers over his skin and making him sigh with delight. Your nails tease the creases in his palm, and he takes a moment to watch your expression morph, realization playing with your features before you become the woman he calls his. ‘But I want to be the one touching you.’

‘Touch me,’ he says, sounding almost as though he is begging. 'Please, touch me.’

It startles him even as he says it, how easily he gives over and into you. Stepping closer, he feels the heat from your chest invade him, tongue sitting heavy in his mouth and wet once more, this time with desire. Your lips are pink, flushed, eyes running over his features, possessive. You are possessive of him, and the knowledge of this makes his breath catch, overcome with a pleasure that feels much like sin.

‘When you held my hand,’ you begin, lacing your hands together to feel the whole him, 'I saw myself kissing you.’

He nods, closing the distance between your bodies, no longer able to truly be separate form you. Releasing one of your hands, he cups your face in his hand before pulling it through your hair and down to your neck. The length of your neck is something he considers holy, the supple skin and the tendons things he wants to mark and claim. ‘I saw that when I read your palm.’

‘Is that why you faded for a moment?’ you ask, voice thick and deep. It’s clear you’re struggling just as much as he with your own composure, the urge to feel him beneath you winning over.

And it should alarm him, how quickly he gives in the white hot need to hold you to him, but really he only feels a tepid pool of pride at the base of his spine. Releasing your other hand, he rests his palm on the crook of your lower back, smiling impishly at the keening sigh his contact elicits from your throat.

Pulling you close, he tilts your head up, peering into your eyes as he hovers just above your lips. ‘It took a lot of control not to kiss you then and there.’

‘Why didn’t you?’ you whisper, licking your lips as if readying yourself for him.

‘If I started,’ he says, breath cascading over your cheeks and down your throat. 'I’d never stop.’

Pressing your fingers into the hard muscles of his back, you lean upward and smile. ‘So start now.’

Eagerly, he closes the distance between your lips, kissing you as though it is the only thing he knows how to do. The softness of the kiss quickly fades as you fall into one another, pressing your bodies close and gripping at one another as though you’re falling through space and time. Almost instantly, you moan into him, digging your fingers into his shirt, his back his soul, as he sucks on your bottom lip. His hand fists in the bottom hem of your shirt, pulling it upwards to sprawl across the smooth expanse of your back. You whimper into his mouth at the touch, holding onto him to keep yourself steady and upright.

Recognizing your loss of control, he smiles against your open mouth, moving his tongue to lap gently at the tip of yours, delicately and carefully asking permission to taste you. A high pitched noise of want erupts from somewhere within you, and he feels his resolve begin to crumble. This would never be just a kiss, he realizes. He feels as though he knew this the moment he saw you, that he would never be able to contain his contact.

Together, you are volatile things, dissolving into and around one another, limits shattering simply because you want to keep one another close. To him, it feels as though you were born for this moment, as though he were born for this, ready to break and burn beneath you.

Your hands move to his hair, carding between the strands and making him gasp. Stroking against your tongue, he moves a hand to cup your ass, squeezing the flesh through your jeans before he breaks from you.

Resting his forehead against yours, he massages your ass to abate your whimper of upset.

‘I told you I wouldn’t stop,’ he gasps, unable to catch his breath.

Removing your hand from his hair, you slowly trace the length of his arm, down and down, until you bring your hand between your bodies. There, you press against the hardness you find beneath his jeans.

‘Did I tell you to?’ you ask, cocking an eyebrow up at him.

Hissing, he leans down to kiss you once again, moving his tongue along your bottom lip before breaking away once more. ‘If I don’t stop, I’ll do more.’

‘I want you to,’ is all you say before your hand begins to massage circles into the hard length of his cock.

With a moan, he pulls away from you entirely, working his way out of his shirt and standing before you, exposed.

This is not like him. He does not so willingly get carried away by desire and need, but, with you, his barriers have broken. He’s charged, something electric, finally alive simply because you have touched him, have wanted to touch him.

Giggling at his eagerness, you follow suit, pulling your own shirt over your head and smirk at the flush that spreads across his chest. Around you, he is suddenly shy, small and mortal and wanting you to be pleased. Biting your lip, you study his hands, the jut of his hip bones, the muscles in his abdomen, and he feels himself begin to shake. All of him twitches beneath your hungry stare, aching to have you, feel you beneath him, trembling just as much as he.

As if you can sense his thoughts, you come forward, hands extended and making for his belt. You stare into his eyes as you undo the metal clasp, pulling the leather from the loops slowly, daring him to stop you. His breath hitches in his chest as he watches you through long eyelashes, cheeks heated and lips parted to release his warm exhale. There’s a hunger in the way his gaze holds yours, and, just as he, you appear staved and needy to keep him beneath your fingers.

‘I don’t do anything unless I want to,’ you say, words clear even though your voice is tight and thick with wanting.

‘I know,’ he manages, words clipped as he stops himself from kissing you once more.

Dropping the belt to the floor, your fingers work at the button to his jeans, still holding his stare. ‘I don’t let things in unless I want them here.’

Shifting slightly at the seductive feel of your nails teasing the skin at the waistband of his jeans and boxers, he hisses. ‘I know.’

Tugging his jeans down to his feet, you smile at him, proud. ‘I want you.’

‘Good.’

It’s all he says before he claims your mouth once more, his own hands working at your jeans. As he undoes the button, he pulls you against his hardness by the fabric, mouth sliding from your lips and down to your neck. He works the jeans down your hips slowly, mouth moving at the same pace down your neck, your collarbone, the top of your breast as he lowers himself to his knees.

Kissing just under your navel, he pushes your jeans to your feet before pressing his lips to your knees and listens to your sharp hiss of shock with glee. Lifting one leg and then the other to ease you out of your clothes, he leans inward to kiss the inside of your thigh, your hand fisting in his hair as you moan at the heat of his touch. Nipping gently at the supple skin, he feels his own body sway, the smell of you consuming the cells of his lungs.

Pulling away, he looks up at you, eyes wide at the sight. Your disheveled hair, your full lips, the sheen of perspiration that lingers at the hollow of your neck. 'I want to be on my knees for you,’ he says, toying idly yet teasingly at the band of your underwear.

All you do is nod, granting him permission to pull them down over your thighs. Closing your eyes, you place your hand in his hair once more, sighing as his mouth returns to your thighs, kissing up to where you want him most. You’re already soaked for him, he can tell by the moisture that collects at your folds, and he glides his hand up your leg to tease your center. The smell of you overwhelms him, a groan taking shape at the back of his tongue that rumbles through the marrow of his bones. Your wetness comes away on the length of his finger, and he immediately moves it to his mouth, sucking it clean with greed.

'Shit,’ you whisper, watching him with dilated pupils.

'You’re so fucking sweet,’ he murmurs, pushing your legs apart before gripping your legs with strong hands. 'Keep yourself standing.’

At this, he leans forward, pressing his nose to your center as his lips work at your folds. A cry leaves your throat, hand in his hair tightening to a fist. Gently he kisses you, lets the tip of his tongue separate you and offer you kitten licks, before pushing inside. Feeling the warm spread of your center, the strength of the muscle working at you, drinking you to his fill, your fingers clutch at him, tugging his hair and making him laugh against your core. Beneath his hands, the muscles in your thighs clench, tightening with each movement of his tongue.

'Min, please.’

When you moan his name, he feels as though he has been touched by god, blood no longer fire but liquid gold. Separating your folds with his tongue, he thrusts between your walls, curling deep inside you to drink you down, water for his parched veins. Your other hand grips his shoulder, steadying yourself as your knees begin to shake. He sets a rhythm that mirrors the length and time of your moans, his own hardness growing painful with each lap at your juices.

Removing a hand from your hip, he presses two fingers to your clit, rubbing circles that move in time with his tongue, offering uneven pressure to keep your orgasm at bay. You gasp at the contact, head thrown back as you stare wide eyed at the ceiling, body turning to fire as he pleasures you as though he has always known where to touch you the most. He hits places inside you you did not know could be accessed, bringing you to the edge quickly before easing you away, keeping you on a wave of pleasure that eats at the coil of pleasure in your stomach.

'Minseok,’ you moan, insistent and whining.

Pulling away from your cunt, he gazes up at you with a blissful smile, mouth glistening.

‘Come up here,’ you breathe, voice unsteady, 'I want your mouth.’

Rising to a stand, he grips your waist and kisses you hard, pressing his cock into your thigh. His hands move quickly to the backs of your thighs, lifting you as your wrap your legs around his waist. He does not break from you, merely moves his mouth to the tendon in your neck where he bites and sucks, building a purple blemish against the skin as he carries you to the bed. Your own mouth is greedy, biting and kissing at what you can find before he lowers you down gently, pushing his boxers to his feet.

He crawls over you, nestling between your spread legs before he kisses at your collarbone.

‘If we do this…’ he starts, though his words die, the sight of you below him an unprecedented aphrodisiac.

‘Does it matter anymore?’ you question, running your hand through his hair before you lean up to kiss him, biting at his bottom lip. ‘Do you really want to stop?’

Shaking his head, he lowers himself against you, cock pushing against your thigh. ‘I can’t stop.’

‘Then don’t.’

You reach beside your bed to your nightstand, pulling open the top drawer to grab a condom. He regards the foil with a questioning brow, confused though not altogether upset.

'After I met you,’ you begin, 'I had a feeling.’

He can’t help the laugh that erupts from his chest, delighted and amazed. The sound dies as you grip him, pumping him with a strong fist and making his sight grow hazy. Your own laugh washes over him as you pull open the foil and move the condom over his length, letting your fingers glide over him and linger for several seconds. His gaze darkens at your touch, hips twitching at the contact, eager to be buried inside you. Resting your hands on his shoulders, you spend a moment regarding one another, a final question of permission before he lowers himself against your folds.

He spreads you easily, pushing inside as though he were made to fit you. Closing your eyes tightly, you wait for the discomfort that usually comes with this kind of strength, though you do not feel it. He buries himself to the hilt, gasping at the feel of your warm walls around him, fluttering. A whine bursts from his chest as he closes his eyes, keeping himself still and giving you time to get used to his intrusion.

His senses are flooded with you, body desperate to move and have his fill of you, while is skin aches from your touch. The nodes of his lungs bloom, swollen now by the strength of your smell while your essence lingers on the base of his tongue. He’s drunk, this is how it feels to be truly drunk, and for a moment he thinks this may be paradise, until he feels you clench around him, walls tight with urgency.

'Move,’ you beg, grinding your hips up against him. 'I need you to fuck me.’

Gripping your wrists, he pushes your hands above your head as he pulls out to deliver a punishing thrust.

‘Fuck!’ you both exclaim, your back arching from the bed and leaving no room for air between your bodies.

Pulling out of you slowly this time, he takes his time enjoying the feel of you against and around him, your walls clenching in time with his movements. It strikes him how easily you accommodate him, body spreading and opening to him as if welcoming him, its match, back to where he belongs. At once, you are full of him, clinging to him as he pulls out to make sure he never departs from you, only to whimper with satisfaction every time he pushes back inside, touching and pressing at all of you. After several thrusts, he sets a rhythm that makes you both gasp for breath, releasing your hands to hold you down into the bed, pressing against your hips.

‘You feel so good,’ he gasps, sweat breaking out at his hairline as he fucks you with abandon.

All you can do is nod, wrapping your legs around his waist and gripping the cheeks of his ass to keep him close.

Each time he pulls out, he watches the way you expression changes, the minute lines of pleasure giving shape to all your shades. He’s hypnotized by you, by the way you keep your eyes open to read and to see him, the way your heels dig into his lower back, an effort to keep him inside you as he pulls out, only for your bite your lip on a whimper as he thrusts back in. You are a mesmerizing, exquisite thing, something he will crave and need until the sun turns black.

When he moves a hand to your clit, you gasp, throat dry and voice faded to little more than breath. He presses messy circles into your clit, offering pressure in time with the thrusts of his hips, and your eyes go wind, glassy with pleasure. You appear drunk, lost and unfocused, lips parted as you moan his name. He burns the image into his memory, the most incredible thing he has seen in life and in dreams.

'Min,’ you whimper. 'I’m gonna come.’

He doesn’t say anything, merely nods, feeling the way your walls grip him with desperation. As he pushes you closer to the edge, your hands slide over his back, moving across the slickness of his skin before settling on his biceps. Lifting your hips in a quick, fervent rhythm, he presses against your clit with a vengeance.

'Come,’ he commands, delighted as your soul ascends beneath him.

Your energy erupts into gold and white, your orgasm working through your thighs and back, making you tighten with a loud cry. In the throes of your orgasm, even your bones seem to quake, hands pressing into his muscles and leaving crescent moon indents in the skin. You clench around him, back lifting from the bed as you press yourself against him, the force of your orgasm willing you to open him and live inside his heart until the end of time. He thrusts through your orgasm, drawing it out with his fingers on your clit, working the nub to keep your trembling, until you fall back against the bed, soft and pliant once more.

Spent and sweating, you keep your eyes closed in the wake of your orgasm, drunk on the feeling of him and the way his body works within yours. The sensitive nerves of your walls make you whimper with each of his thrusts, one hand falling from his arm to your lips to keep your moans quiet. Proud of how he has turned you into a relic of ecstasy, he moves inside you with with invigorated thrusts, only three more times before he shudders, he own orgasm overtaking the base of his spine. He spills inside the condom with a moan he etches into the skin of your chest, shuddering against your body as he kisses and kisses at your sternum.

Like this, you remain for a long time, his body still against yours as your fingers play with the strands of his hair. It takes a long time for either of you to find your voices, words lazy and quiet.

'I’ve never come like that,’ he admits to the top of your breast, sighing at the feel of your fingers before dropping a wet kiss to your skin.

Arching your chest into the contact, your sigh mixes with your yawn. 'I don’t think I’ve ever come,’ you admit, unsure how this sex compares to any you’ve ever had before.

And, like this, with him on your chest, tucked into your neck as your lips graze his forehead, that you both fall into a comfortable, dreamless sleep.

\---

It’s the scream that wakes him, and for a moment, he thinks it is Yixing.

He should be used to this, he thinks, though he truly never is. Something about this scream feels different, urgent in the same way but somehow farther from him, in both intimacy and distance. It’s rare he sleeps this deeply, rare his body settles enough for even Yixing’s voice to become warped with his exhaustion, and it takes him several seconds to react to the sound.

A body lurches against his jaw, launching him into a state of confusion before he remembers it, you, the sex, the warmth, the seal.

'Who is that?’ he asks, staring at your pale face, sight clearing the longer he witnesses the swiftness with which your blood leaves your cheeks.

'I don’t know it, sounds -’

Another scream, richer and higher in its tone cuts you off.

Dressing quickly, you both go through the motions without saying anything, the air in the room quickly turning into something sickly, making his skin start to disgust him. Minseok can feel it, the weight of change tearing at his lungs, his mind suddenly flooding with unclear thoughts. The world feels tilted, tilted and shattered and wrong, and he feels ill trying to reconcile this moment with the way he felt last night.

You run out of the room, though his own movements are slow and sluggish, body unable to keep up with you. On the stairs, he wants to collapse, curl up with his knees at his chest and cry - he has never cried, not even as he watched his friends, his leader, die before he eyes. Minseok does not cry, but today, it is the only thing he thinks he can do. Moving down the stairs takes though, the concerted effort of telling his legs to move until he makes it to the door, and finally understands.

He was right.

You would know when a seal is broken. The breaking of a seal is an undeniable, terrible thing.

Standing behind you, feeling grief and terror and all the catastrophe in the world, he finally sees it.

In your yard, hundreds of crows, black and beautiful, lay dead, gathered there as though in a swarm as the trees begin to rot.


End file.
